From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

A north wind is blowing whitecaps to our shore on Carman’s Bay. It’s a blustery day, cold in the 40s but sunny, quite a change from the gray, rainy days we’ve had for weeks. I’m anticipating a yearly May basket delivered by my neighbor Suzy. She’s so good about honoring all the holidays, making them extra special.

Besides May Day, Mother’s Day is celebrated. Anna Jarvis spearheaded the first Mother’s Day events in 1908 to honor her own mother, a Sunday school teacher and caregiver for wounded soldiers during the Civil War. Anna campaigned zealously for the holiday to become official, and in 1914, Congress recognized it as a national holiday. Quickly the floral and greeting-card industries discovered the commercial possibilities of the holiday. By 1920, disgusted by the prevalence of pricey cards and boxes of candy, Jarvis began urging people to stop buying flowers and cards for their mothers. In a press release, she wrote that florists and greeting card manufacturers were “charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers and termites that would undermine with their greed one of the finest, noblest and truest movements and celebrations.” Going door-to-door, she collected petitions to rescind Mother’s Day and spent the rest of her life trying to abolish the holiday she founded.

Hallmark makes a bundle…around 162 million greeting cards are sent, making Mother’s Day the third largest card-sending holiday in the world. Kids and dads honor mom by treating her in various ways. Some children may be inspired to serve breakfast in bed to mom. As they serve microwave pancakes, burnt toast and juice, crumbs are sprinkled on the sheets and drops of spilled coffee stain her pillows. Can you imagine what a mess the kitchen will be? Dad may decide to treat mom to a fancy brunch, but on the holiday, restaurants are crowded with crying babies and runaway toddlers picking through the food. It’s usually a chaotic holiday at any restaurant.

With Mother’s Day arriving May 14, I looked for my favorite clipping of a short essay by Dianne Lorang of Belgrade, Mont. The yellowed, food-stained copy has no more identification than the author, but it’s been in my files for years.

Remember that favored “Love” chapter from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, which some of us used at our weddings? Ms. Lorang used the same verse format when she wrote “The Love Chapter for Mothers.”

“If I talk to my children about what is right and what is wrong, but have not love, I am like a ringing doorbell or pots banging in the kitchen. And though I know what stages they will go through, and understand their growing pains, and can answer all their questions about life, and believe myself to be a devoted mother, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give up the fulfillment of a career to make my children’s lives better, and stay up all night sewing costumes or baking cookies on short notice, but grumble about lack of sleep, I have not love and accomplish nothing.

A loving mother is patient with her children’s immaturity and kind even when they are not; a loving mother is not jealous of their youth nor does she hold it over their heads whenever she has sacrificed for them. A loving mother does not push her children into doing things her way. She is not irritable, even when the chicken pox has kept her confined with three whining children for two weeks, and does not resent the child who brought the affliction home in the first place.

A loving mother is not relieved when her disagreeable child finally disobeys her directly and she can punish him, but rather rejoices with him when he is being more cooperative. A loving mother bears much of the responsibility for her children; she believes in them; she hopes in each one’s individual ability to stand out as a light in a dark world; and she endures every backache and heartache to accomplish that.

A loving mother never really dies. As for home baked bread, it will be consumed and forgotten; as for spotless floors, they will soon gather dust and heel marks. As for children, well, right now toys, friends and food are all-important to them. But when they grow up it will have been how their mother loved them that will determine how they love others. In that way she will live on.

So care, training and a loving mother reside in a home, these three, but the greatest of these is a loving mother.”

I wouldn’t give up this special holiday for anything. Best of all are the photos and cards that my little kids made in school for Mother’s Day. Their handmade cards on colored paper pasted with sticky flower petals and a love message written with dirty hands clutching assorted crayon colors are proof that they really love me!!! Their cards are priceless.

This Mother’s Day, remember your moms who made breakfast before you ran off to school and had a hot meal and homemade cookies for the family in the evening. Remember her combing your hair and giving you your weekly allowance so you could go to the movies? And how about those Buster Brown shoes she insisted you wear so your feet wouldn’t be deformed? Remember holding her hand walking to your first day of school and sitting next to her in church Sunday morning? Remember how she fretted telling you about the birds and the bees and your first date? And those awful days she dared to ride with you in the car when you practiced driving for that dreaded parallel parking exam?   

Remember the last time you held her hand and said goodbye? Even today, maybe many years later, she continues to remain in your heart. Be a source of love, the kind that reflects her loving care, to those around you. No matter how old we get, we’ll never forget the love our mothers bestowed on us.

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.